Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction. The English Romantic Poets: Their Background, Their
Country’s History, and the Sources that Influenced Their Literary
Output
Chapter One. Borrowed Imagination in the Wake of Terror: Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and the Arabian Nights
Chapter Two. The Riots of Colors, Sights, and Sounds: John Keats’
Melancholic Lover and the East
Chapter Three. The Natural Goodness of Man: William Wordsworth’s
Journey from the Sensuous to the Sublime
Chapter Four. Poetic Intuition and Mystic Vision: William Blake’s
Quest for Equality and Freedom
Chapter Five. The Interrogation of Political and Social Systems:
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Call for Drastic Societal Change
Chapter Six. The Infatuation With Personal, Political, and Poetic
Freedom: George Gordon Byron and his Byronic Hero
Conclusion. How Valid is Kipling’s Phrase that East and West Can
Never Meet?
Bibliography
Appendices
About the author
Index
Samar Attar is an invited speaker at international universities and organizations in Egypt, Syria, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. She is the author of Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe.
This erudite study is the genesis of careful consideration over
some years. In Borrowed Imagination, Attar brings to bear an
impressive array of works by the British Romantic poets and
Islamic-Arab sources. This work could be only undertaken by a
scholar with an impressive knowledge of both Western and Eastern
literature. Attar is one of the few scholars in the field today who
can claim such credentials. . . .Attar’s work is a major step
toward rectifying the lacuna in acknowledging and recognizing
Arab-Islamic influences on Western literature. . . .Borrowed
Imagination should become essential reading for anyone studying or
writing about the Romantic poets. It not only widens our
understanding of the Romantic poets and their work but also draws
attention to the centuries old interaction of West and East.
*Arab Studies Quarterly*
Samar Attar’s Borrowed Imagination challenges the pervasive
assumption that British Romantic poets depended almost exclusively
on philosophical, religious, and literary sources from the West...
By tracing specific references to these sources, tropes associated
with orientalism, and narrative patterns that may indicate the
possibility of direct or indirect influence, Attar generates a
wealth of possible leads for further scholarly study and offers a
comparative analysis of major works in British Romantic
literature.
*Journal of Romanticism*
Many scholars have speculated on the influence of the Arabian
Nights and other works of Arabic literature on the British romantic
poets. With the publication of Samar Attar's Borrowed Imagination,
such speculations can now move into the realm of certitude. Attar
makes a cogent and compelling case for taking the Arabic genealogy
of many of the romantic poets' literary sources of inspiration
seriously. This is a major contribution to the study of the
interconnectedness of humanistic enterprises and the politics of
engaging it.
*Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University*
An extensive, intellectual history, richly contextualised, of the
Romantic period in English literature, Attar’s work demands that we
take note of the multiple Arab sources of the celebrated Romantic
imagination. Exhaustively researched, detailed accounts of
influences on the poets Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats,
Shelley, and Byron fill an important gap in our understanding of
the Romantics. Scholars will also find the central role of the One
Thousand and One Nights in the themes and imagery of Romantic
poetry provocative.
*Geetha Ramanathan, West Chester University*
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